Guard rails or fencing are commonly used adjacent locations that present a danger to an individual's safety or to risk of falling. For example, rails or fencing are often installed at the edges of elevated floors, about access openings in a floor or about openings in a floor to accommodate staircases between floors. As well, rails or fencing can be used to create a barrier about operating equipment to prevent an individual from accidentally contacting the equipment.
These guard rails or fences usually comprise horizontal members that are joined to spaced vertical stanchions that are permanently anchored in place. Labour and materials costs for installing such safety barriers can be expensive.
Temporary or removable guards rails have also been developed chiefly for use on construction sites to provide for safety of workers. An advantage of these temporary guard rails is that they are much less expensive to erect than permanent railings, however, they tend not to be as sturdy. Examples of prior temporary guard rail systems include U.S. Pat. No. 4,830,341 to Arteau et al. and Russian Patent 1811554-A3.
U.S. Pat. No. 4,830,341 discloses an anchor for a temporary safety fence at a building construction site comprising a plate that is bolted directly to a concrete type floor surface. The plate includes an upright sleeve to receive the stanchion of a guard rail.
Russian Patent 1811554-A3 discloses a temporary safety barrier that includes a stanchion that is wedge fitted into a specially formed conical hole in the floor.
Both these designs rely on drilling or forming holes in the surface on which the guard rail is supported. At a construction site, this does not present much of a drawback as the holes can be patched over as construction is completed. However, these designs are not generally appropriate for temporary use at sites other than construction sites as they leave unsightly anchoring holes visible when they are removed. The drilling of holes may also affect the structural integrity of the surface to which the guard rails are mounted.
In many industrial sites, grating floors comprising an array of longitudinal, spaced and parallel grating members joined by transverse cross members are used to create relatively inexpensive raised floors and catwalks for accessing equipment. Applicant has developed an anchor for a guard rail system that can be releasably attached to the grating floor using a novel anchor plate.